Digital Commons Network^™

Evaluation Of Need And Feasibility Of Tuberculosis Screening In Buprenorphine Treatment Programs, Ryan Schwarz

Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library

Background: Buprenorphine's availability in primary care settings offers increased access to treatment and linkage to primary care for opioid-dependent patients. Currently, tuberculin skin testing (TST) is recommended for patients enrolling in methadone maintenance treatment (MMT), but not for those enrolling in buprenorphine maintenance treatment (BMT).

Objectives: To compare TST screening results in enrollees in BMT and MMT programs and assess the correlates of TST positivity among these subjects.

Methods: A cross-sectional analysis of a retrospective cohort study was conducted to compare concurrent TST results among contemporaneously matched groups of MMT and BMT patients in the same community.

Results: TST positivity …

Influenza Vaccine Given To Pregnant Women Reduces Hospitalization Due To Influenza In Their Infants, Isaac Benowitz

Yale Medicine Thesis Digital Library

The aim of this study was to determine whether giving influenza vaccine to pregnant women can reduce the incidence of hospitalization due to influenza in their infants in the first year of life. This was a matched, hospital-based case-control study at Yale-New Haven Children's Hospital. Case and control subjects were all aged hospitalization, matched to cases by date of birth and date of hospitalization (both within 4 weeks before or after). We contacted parents of all subjects to collect information on the subjects' health and home setting and to get permission to review subjects' and mothers' hospital records and outpatient …

Post-Dural Puncture Posterior Reversible Encephalopathy Syndrome, Fauzia N. Minai, Syeda Fauzia Hasan, Mughis Sheerani

Department of Anaesthesia

We report the case of a young patient with 36 weeks pregnancy, and an acute respiratory infection with severe bronchospasm, who developed an occipital headache and neck pain on the third day of inadvertent dural puncture during placement of combined epidural spinal anaesthesia for caesarian section. It was diagnosed as post-dural puncture headache until generalised tonic clonic siezures occurred the next day raising the suspicion of postpartum eclampsia or meningitis. Posterior reversible encephalopathy syndrome was diagnosed on MRI of the brain which showed features of reversible ischemia in the posterior region of the brain. With anticonvulsant therapy and antibiotics there …

Vitamin D Deficiency And Sun Avoidance Among University Students At Abu Dhabi, United Arab Emirates, Fatme Al Anouti, Justin Thomas, Laila Abdel-Wareth, Jaishen Rajah, William B. Grant, Afrozul Haq

All Works

This study offers evidence that vitamin D deficiency could be a major public health burden among young Emirati adults, mostly because of sun deprivation in a sun-blessed country. This study included a random sample of 138 females and 70 males tested for serum 25-hydroxyvitamin D [25(OH)D] status. To further evaluate the predictors of vitamin D status in this population, the study examined diet, obesity and sun exposure. In summer, the mean serum 25(OH)D concentration for females was 20.9 ± 14.9 nmol/L, whereas that for males was 27.3 ± 15.7 nmol/L. Females scored significantly higher than males on the sun avoidance …

Efficacy Of Constructed Wetlands Of Various Depths For Natural Amphibian Community Conservation, Andrea Nicole Drayer

Online Theses and Dissertations

Wetlands provide critical habitat for a diverse group of amphibians and provide important ecosystem functions and services to humans. Despite this, most natural wetlands have been lost to land use practices. Consequently, constructing wetlands has become a common practice to mitigate for removed wetlands and to manage for wildlife. There were three primary objectives of this research: 1) to examine whether or not constructed wetlands located on ridge tops in eastern Kentucky in the Daniel Boone National Forest (DBNF) had amphibian communities comparable to natural ephemeral wetlands, 2) to examine amphibian predator-prey relationships within the constructed wetlands, and 3) to …

Amphibian Community Similarity Between Natural Ponds And Constructed Ponds Of Multiple Types In Daniel Boone National Forest, Kentucky, Robert Daniel Denton

Online Theses and Dissertations

Amphibians are in a worldwide decline. Among the many causes for amphibian declines, habitat loss and alteration remains one of the most significant. A lack of federal protection for isolated wetlands that provide habitat for unique species has resulted in the loss of breeding habitat and unregulated mitigation practices. Ponds built for mitigation purposes often do not replicate the lost ponds in structure or ecological processes. A lack of general monitoring has produced a void in knowledge of what long-term role constructed ponds play in shaping amphibian communities. My objective was to compare amphibian communities of natural ponds and multiple …

Haematology Of Downer Dairy Cows With Fatty Liver, Emmanouil Kalaitzakis, Nikolaos Panousis, Nikolaos Roubies, Eleni Kaldrymidoy, Harilaos Karatzias

Turkish Journal of Veterinary & Animal Sciences

This study examined downer dairy cows with concurrent fatty liver of different degrees and evaluated the haematological values, the relationship and joint occurrence of fatty liver severity and haematology and compared the haematological values in the downer animals that finally died or cured. Blood and liver biopsy samples were obtained from 36 Holstein downer cows shortly after they became recumbent and before they were treated. Blood analysis included determination of haematocrit, haemoglobin, white blood, granular cell and lymphocytes count, and platelet number. Liver tissue was examined histologically and was classified according to severity of fatty liver. The majority of downer …

A Comparison Of Different Kinds Of Malassezia Species In Healthy Dogs And Dogs With Otitis Externa And Skin Lesions, Samaneh Eidi, Ali Reza Khosravi, Shahram Jamshidi

Turkish Journal of Veterinary & Animal Sciences

Malassezia yeasts are commensal organisms on the skin of warm-blooded vertebrates. The lipid-dependent Malassezia species have recently been cultured from veterinary specimens. The present study investigated and compared different Malassezia species in the skin and external ear canal of healthy and diseased dogs. The sampling in the study was carried out on 152 animals, comprising 90 samples from the diseased group and 62 samples from the healthy group. All of the samples were determined by cytological examination and fungal culture. The isolated yeasts were identified by their morphological features as well as their physiological characteristics. The culture results were positive …

Reduction Of Exacerbations By The Pde4 Inhibitor Roflumilast--The Importance Of Defining Different Subsets Of Patients With Copd, Stephen I. Rennard, Peter M.A. Calverley, Udo M. Goehring, Dirk Bredenbröker, Fernando J. Martinez

Journal Articles: Pulmonary & Critical Care Med

BACKGROUND: As chronic obstructive pulmonary disease (COPD) is a heterogeneous disease it is unlikely that all patients will benefit equally from a given therapy. Roflumilast, an oral, once-daily phosphodiesterase 4 inhibitor, has been shown to improve lung function in moderate and severe COPD but its effect on exacerbations in unselected populations was inconclusive. This led to the question of whether a responsive subset existed that could be investigated further.

METHODS: The datasets of two previous replicate, randomized, double-blind, placebo-controlled, parallel-group studies (oral roflumilast 500 μg or placebo once daily for 52 weeks) that were inconclusive regarding exacerbations were combined in …

Post-Racial Proxies: Resurgent State And Local Anti-"Alien" Laws And Unity-Rebuilding Frames For Antidiscrimination Values, Mary D. Fan

Cardozo Law Review

Though unauthorized migration into the United States has diminished substantially since 2007, anti-"illegal alien" state and local laws and furor are flaring again. While one of the biggest worries regarding such "anti-alien" laws is the risk of racialized harm, courts invalidating overreaching statutes are relying on structural or procedural grounds, such as preemption and due process doctrines. This Article examines how these political and legal trends point to how proxies are used in a post-racial era to dance around race, in constructive, national unity-rebuilding as well as divisive, inflammatory ways. Anti-alien legislation is a proxy way to vent resurgent racialized …

Assessing City Preparedness For A Biological Attack, Joseph T. Moore

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

The lack of preparedness by local communities in the event of a biological attack is a predicament that will result in chaos and an increase in casualties. Assessing city preparedness is essential in the event of a biological attack. The potential for an enormous number of casualties is real; it is imperative, therefore, for local communities to be prepared in the event of a biological attack. This descriptive single case study investigated whether one city in the southeastern United States is prepared for a biological attack. System theory provided the theoretical framework for this research, with the unit of analysis …

Psychiatric Disorders As Potential Predictors In Medical Disease Development, Linda Kay Taliaferro

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Millions of individuals suffer disability or death from immune-based inflammatory diseases. If psychiatric disorders could be empirically linked to the prediction of immune-based inflammatory diseases, there would be a basis for promoting disease prevention measures for individuals diagnosed with one of four psychiatric disorders. Psychoneuroimmunology provided the theoretical base for understanding emotionally induced medical disease development. In this quantitative study, a parallel archival research design was used to investigate the degree to which generalized anxiety disorder, posttraumatic stress disorder, major depression recurrent, and dysthymic disorder predicted the presence of atherosclerosis, cardiovascular heart disease, rheumatoid arthritis, cancer, and type II diabetes. …

Assessing Doppler-Derived Pressure Gradients And Liver Echogenicity To Predict Liver Disease, Joy D. Guthrie

Walden Dissertations and Doctoral Studies

Liver disease causes an estimated 36,000 deaths in the United States each year. Currently, to detect liver disease, an invasive biopsy is required. Other, less invasive diagnostic alternatives are needed. The purpose of this study was to assess the efficacy of a modified form of sonographic screening, including portal, hepatic, and splenic venous pressure, hepatic venous waveform analysis, portal vein diameter, and echogenicity of liver parenchyma in predicting liver disease. The study was based on conversion of a velocity measurement to a pressure gradient, allowing a fluid comparison between known catheterization venous pressures and sonographic Doppler-derived pressure gradients. This study …

Natural Product Inhibitors Of Rhodesain : The Major Cysteine Protease Of Trypanosoma Brucei, Ifedayo Victor Ogungbe

Dissertations

No abstract provided.

Hsv-1 Infection In Keratinocyte Cell Lines Treated With Mitotic Inhibitors, Asma A. Abbas

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The hypothesis for this research was: Herpes simplex virus type 1 (HSV-1) infection of murine keratinocyte cell lines (HEL-30 and PAM-212) treated with mitotic inhibitors leads to silencing of virus replication. At 0.1 (Multiplicity of infection) MOI, PAM-212 keratinocytes showed some cell lysis and viral plaques were seen in HEL-30 keratinocyte cultures. PAM-212 keratinocytes, infected at 0.01 MOI, were more susceptible to the lytic effect of HSV-1 than were HEL-30 cells. In this study, 5-fluoro-2'-deoxyuridine (FUDR) treatment of both keratinocyte cell lines permitted an increase survival of HSV-1- infected keratinocytes especially for PAM-212 cell line which was further examined for …

Distribution Of Cellular Interferon Beta (Ifn-Β) In Murine Fibroblast Cell Lines Upon Infection Of Hsv-1, Rachael E. Curtis

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

The hypothesis for this study was: IFN-β expression differs between murine fibroblasts (A2R1 and L929) of different mouse strains upon infection of HSV-1. Fluorescent microscopy was used to examine localization of IFN-β in the different murine fibroblast and keratinocyte cell lines after 6 hours of infection with herpes simplex virus type-1 (HSV-1). Because keratinocytes cell lines HEL-30 and PAM-212 grew in clusters, staining patterns in individual cells could not be determined. A notable difference in localization of IFN-β immune staining was seen between the two cell lines when infected with HSV-1. The A2R1 cell line showed perinuclear (PN) localization, while …

Targeted Knockdown Of Amp-Activated Protein Kinase Alpha 1 And Alpha 2 Catalytic Subunits, Larissa J. Tangeman

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

AMP-activated protein kinase (AMPK) regulates cellular metabolism and promotes ATP production when energy is depleted. Evidence suggests that AMPK may be involved in oxygen sensing by carotid body cells, which are responsible for regulating the breathing rate to maintain proper blood oxygen levels. There are two isoforms of the catalytic alpha subunit, AMPKalpha1 and AMPKalpha2, which could be involved in oxygen sensing. Here, the production of a short hairpin RNA (shRNA) targeting both catalytic isoforms of AMPK in human, mouse, and rat is described. The shRNA causes significant knockdown of both isoforms of AMPK alpha in mouse and human cells …

Strategies For Long-Term Renal Allograft Survival In Iga Nephropathy Patients, Erin E. Lintz

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

IgA nephropathy is one of the most common kidney diseases worldwide. Most IgA nephropathy patients will undergo a kidney transplant as a treatment. Treatment currently includes the use of immunosuppressants which are necessary to prevent graft rejection but present harmful side-effects when taken long-term. This review focuses on strategies which have the ability to promote tolerance of both donor and recipient cells within a transplant recipient. Such strategies allow development of mixed chimerism and thereby alleviate the need for long-term immunosuppressant usage in allograft recipients. These strategies could be applied to IgA nephropathy patients to allow kidney allograft acceptance without …

The Development Of Silver Nanoparticles As Antiviral Agents, John Christopher Trefry

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Silver nanoparticles (AgNPs) have received tremendous attention for their antimicrobial properties; however, many gaps in knowledge exist. To address these issues, three research objectives were examined. The first objective hypothesized AgNPs can be size selected and concentrated via tangential flow ultrafiltration. The second objective hypothesized a high-throughput method could be developed to screen nanoparticle antiviral-activity and cytotoxicity simultaneously. The third objective hypothesized AgNPs inhibit viruses by preventing viral entry.

For objective one, a tangential flow ultrafiltration scheme was tested on AgNPs synthesized via the Creighton Colloid method. AgNPs were analyzed via transmission electron microscopy. In objective two, an HIV-1 vector …

Amino Acid Substitutions Created In Reverse Transcriptase And Their Influence On Hiv-1 Mutation Frequencies, Amani Saud Alhejely

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

As research has shown, a high mutation rate occurs during the reverse transcription RT process because HIV reverse transcriptase fails to correct erroneously incorporated nucleotides during the reverse transcription process. Based on various research articles, a series of amino acid substitutions created in RT were collected to find out their influence on virus mutation frequencies. Two tables were used; one for amino acid substitutions created in RT that increased the HIV-1 mutation rate and another for amino acid substitutions created in RT that decreased the HIV-1 mutation rate. The tables show which amino acid substitutions created in RT decreased or …

Developing A Quantitative Pcr Assay For Detecting Viral Vector Shedding From Animals, Swathee Chinnasamy

Browse all Theses and Dissertations

Replication deficient viruses have been used widely for replacing, repairing, and deleting target genes. These recombinant viruses are tested on research animals or patients in clinical trials. Although viral vectors distribute in the body, they are also disseminated into the environment through secretion and excretion processes. By studying the extent of shedding, a proper risk assessment can be performed and appropriate biocontainment can be achieved. Adenoviral and lentiviral vectors were produced from commercially available kits. The transgene present in both vector systems was the lacZ reporter gene encoding for β-galactosidase. Primers and probes were designed for the encapsidation region of …

The Role Of Co-Infection In The Spread Of Hiv In Sub-Saharan Africa, Diego Fernando Cuadros

Theses and Dissertations--Biology

The cause of the high HIV prevalence in sub-Saharan Africa is incompletely understood, with heterosexual penile-vaginal transmission proposed as the main mechanism. Heterosexual HIV transmission has a very low probability; further, a single estimation of heterosexual probability of HIV transmission fails to reproduce the variation associated with important biological cofactors. In particular, studies of HIV incidence suggest that co-infection with other infectious diseases influence the HIV transmission, and therefore might substantially vary the pattern of the spread of the infection. To assess the effect of co-infection on the spread of HIV, I developed and analyzed several mathematical and statistical models …

The Life And Times Of A Kansas Horse And Buggy Doctor And His Recollections On The Care Of Children, Robert D. Schremmer Md, Jane F. Knapp Md

Posters

Describes the career of Arthur Emmanuel Hertzler, MD, 1870-1946, who practiced in Halstead, Kansas.

Barcoded Pyrosequencing Reveals That Consumption Of Galactooligosaccharides Results In A Highly Specific Bifidogenic Response In Humans, Lauren M. G. Davis, Ines Martinez, Jens Walter, Caitlin Goin, Robert W. Hutkins

Department of Food Science and Technology: Faculty Publications

Prebiotics are selectively fermented ingredients that allow specific changes in the gastrointestinal microbiota that confer health benefits to the host. However, the effects of prebiotics on the human gut microbiota are incomplete as most studies have relied on methods that fail to cover the breadth of the bacterial community. The goal of this research was to use high throughput multiplex community sequencing of 16S rDNA tags to gain a community wide perspective of the impact of prebiotic galactooligosaccharide (GOS) on the fecal microbiota of healthy human subjects. Fecal samples from eighteen healthy adults were previously obtained during a feeding trial …

An Experimental Live Chimeric Porcine Circovirus 1-2a Vaccine Decreases Porcine Circovirus 2b Viremia When Administered Intramuscularly Or Orally In A Porcine Circovirus 2b And Porcine Reproductive And Respiratory Syndrome Virus Dual-Challenge Model, Tanja Opriessnig, João C. Gomes-Neto, Michelle Hermann, Hui-Gang Shen, Nathan M. Beach, Yaowei Huang, Patrick G. Halbur, Xiang-Jin Meng

Department of Food Science and Technology: Faculty Publications

Commercially available inactivated vaccines against porcine circovirus type 2 (PCV2) have been shown to be effective in reducing PCV2 viremia. Live-attenuated, orally administered vaccines are widely used in the swine industry for several pathogens because of their ease of use yet they are not currently available for PCV2 and efficacy. The aims of this study were to determine the efficacy of a live-attenuated chimeric PCV2vaccine inadual-challengemodelusingPCV2bandporcine reproductiveandrespiratorysyndrome virus (PRRSV) and to compare intramuscular (IM) and oral (PO) routes of vaccination. Eighty-three 2-week-old pigs were randomized into 12 treatment groups: four vaccinated IM, four vaccinated PO and four non-vaccinated (control) groups. …

Il-2 Limits Il-12 Enhanced Lymphocyte Proliferation During Leishmania Amazonensis Infection, Amanda E. Ramer-Tait, Christine A. Petersen, Douglas E. Jones

Department of Food Science and Technology: Faculty Publications

C3H mice infected with Leishmania amazonensis develop persistent, localized lesions with high parasite loads. During infection, memory/effector CD44^hiCD4⁺ T cells proliferate and produce IL-2, but do not polarize to a known effector phenotype. Previous studies have demonstrated IL-12 is insufficient to skew these antigen-responsive T cells to a functional Th1 response. To determine the mechanism of this IL-12 unresponsiveness, we used an in vitro assay of repeated antigen activation. Memory/effector CD44^hiCD4⁺ T cells did not increase proliferation in response to either IL-2 or IL-12, although these cytokines upregulated CD25 expression. Neutralization of IL-2 enhanced …

Tetherin Inhibits Prototypic Foamy Virus Release, Fengwen Xu, Juan Tan, Ruikang Liu, Dan Xu, Yue Li, Yunqi Geng, Chen Liang, Wentao Qiao

Nebraska Center for Virology: Faculty Publications

Background: Tetherin (also known as BST-2, CD317, and HM1.24) is an interferon- induced protein that blocks the release of a variety of enveloped viruses, such as retroviruses, filoviruses and herpesviruses. However, the relationship between tetherin and foamy viruses has not been clearly demonstrated.

Results: In this study, we found that tetherin of human, simian, bovine or canine origin inhibits the production of infectious prototypic foamy virus (PFV). The inhibition of PFV by human tetherin is counteracted by human immunodeficiency virus type 1 (HIV-1) Vpu. Furthermore, we generated human tetherin transmembrane domain deletion mutant (delTM), glycosyl phosphatidylinositol (GPI) anchor …

Pathogenicity And Rapid Growth Kinetics Of Feline Immunodeficiency Virus Are Linked To 3' Elements, Jesse Thompson, Martha Macmillan, Karen Boegler, Charles Wood, John H. Elder, Sue Vandewoude

Nebraska Center for Virology: Faculty Publications

Chimeric viruses constructed between a highly pathogenic Feline Immunodeficiency Virus isolate (FIV-C36) and a less pathogenic but neurotropic strain (FIV-PPR) have been used to map viral genetic determinants of in vivo pathogenicity. Chimeric virus FIV-PCenv, which contains FIV-C36 genome from the 39 region of pol to upstream of the 3'LTR on an FIV-PPR backbone, was previously shown to be replication-competent in vivo, inducing altered CD⁴⁺ T-cell and neutrophil profiles intermediate between parental strains following a delay in viral replication during initial infection. Examination of FIV-PCenv proviral sequences recovered at week 11 post-infection revealed two changes compared to initial …

Robust Rnai-Based Resistance To Mixed Infection Of Three Viruses In Soybean Plants Expressing Separate Short Hairpins From A Single Transgene, Xiuchun Zhang, Shirley Sato, Xiaohong Ye, Anne E. Dorrance, Thomas Jack Morris, Thomas E. Clemente, Feng Qu

Nebraska Center for Virology: Faculty Publications

Transgenic plants expressing double-stranded RNA (dsRNA) of virus

origin have been previously shown to confer resistance to virus infections

through the highly conserved RNA-targeting process termed RNA silencing

or RNA interference (RNAi). In this study we applied this strategy to

soybean plants and achieved robust resistance to multiple viruses with a

single dsRNA-expressing transgene. Unlike previous reports that relied

on the expression of one long inverted repeat (IR) combining sequences

of several viruses, our improved strategy utilized a transgene designed to

express several shorter IRs. Each of these short IRs contains highly conserved

sequences of one virus, forming dsRNA of …

Kaposi Sarcoma-Associated Herpesvirus Degrades Cellular Toll-Interleukin-1 Receptor Domain-Containing Adaptor-Inducing Β-Interferon (Trif), Humera Ahmad, Rachel Gubbels, Florencia Meyer, Thomas Waterbury, Rongtuan Lin, Luwen Zhang

Nebraska Center for Virology: Faculty Publications

Kaposi sarcoma-associated herpesvirus (KSHV) is a human ƴ - herpesvirus associated with several human malignancies. The replication and transcription activator (RTA) is necessary and sufficient for the switch from KSHV latency to lytic replication. Toll-interleukin-1 receptor (TIR) domain-containing adaptorinducing β-interferon (TRIF, also called TIR-domain-containing adaptor molecule-1 (TICAM-1)) is a signaling adaptor molecule that is critically involved in the Toll-like receptor 3 (TLR-3) and TLR-4 signaling pathways for type I interferon (IFN) production, a key component of innate immunity against microbial infection. In this report, we find a new mechanism by which RTA blocks innate immunity by targeting cellular TRIF. RTA …